Employers Beware: How to Tell If a Person Is Lying In a Job Interview

While it’s important to attract top talent to your business, you also need to know how to interview them well.

A job interview is a great place to get a feel for how a candidate will perform in a position, but you can’t always be sure that they’re being completely honest. It’s important that you take what they say with a grain of salt and know a few ways to find out if they’re being truthful when talking about past positions and previous experience.

Below we’ll tell you exactly how to tell if a person is lying during a job interview.

1. Check Their Body Language

Watching a candidate’s body language closely when they’re speaking is a great way to determine their honesty. Body language signal can tell you a lot about a candidate, including whether they’re telling the truth or not.

Unnecessary fidgeting is usually a pretty good indicator that a job interviewee may have something to hide. If they’re shuffling their feet, moving excessively in their seat, or biting their lip, it may be a sign that their words can’t be trusted.

Keep in mind that when watching body language it’s important to see if you can determine a baseline of someone’s behavior first. Then, if a certain question makes them change from their baseline it may be a sign that something is wrong.

2. Watch Their Eyes

As part of watching a candidate’s body language, watching their eyes is particularly important. Like with other types of body language, it’s important to see if you can get a feel for a person’s baseline behavior first.

One of the biggest eye indicators you should be aware of is if the candidate is constantly looking away when speaking to you about something or answering a question. If they seem to have a hard time looking directly into your eyes when answering a question they may not be telling the full truth.

If you’re serious about screening job applicants, you may even want to use advanced eye detect technology to do it right.

3. Listen to the Tone of Their Voice

The tone of a person’s voice can also be an indicator of their truthfulness.

While stammering or stuttering may simply be a sign of nervousness in some cases, it could be a sign that a person is lying. Suddenly starting to speak more slowly or more quickly can also be a sign of a lie.

While a candidate may be nervous in an interview, you may want to take notice if their voice changes suddenly. If a candidate’s voice starts sounding different right after being asked a specific question, for example, it may indicate that they’re uncomfortable with the question or have something to hide.

4. Think About What They’re Saying

Believe it or not, listening to the actual words that a candidate is saying is often the hardest way to tell if they’re lying or not. Their voice tone, their body language, and their eyes are actually much better indicators. However, you should consider what they’re saying as well.

Remember to look at a resume when speaking to a candidate and ask them to provide extra details about some parts of it. Ask the right interview questions and if there are inconsistencies with what they’re saying and what their resume says you should take notice.

Sometimes a person will add extra details to an answer to cover up a lie while other times they’ll be unable to and will speak in a very generalized way instead. Consider how they have answered previous questions and be aware if there’s a big change in how they’re speaking.

Discovering How to Tell If a Person is Lying

If you’ve been wondering how to tell if a person is lying during a job interview, the above tips should set you in the right direction. Make sure you use the above tips if you want to have the best chance possible at finding the right person for the job.

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